Women's empowerment in Colombia: A multidimensional approach

This article examines the topic of Women's Empowerment in Colombia. Over the past decades the Colombian government has shown progressive commitment towards women's rights, empowerment, advancement of gender equality and the achievement of equal opportunities. While those endeavours present a crucial advancement, they do not automatically translate into better outcomes for women. Although empowerment promotion strategies are evident, they are not based on a clear and measurable understanding of the concept of women's empowerment which facilitate tracking future progress. This article addresses this gap by proposing a multidimensional index of women's empowerment. This index puts forward specific indicators which allows for monitoring over time and can be adapted to monitor interventions and performance of programmes which target women's empowerment. Ultimately, this would help in the improvement of the design of policies and function as a starting point to create more favourable conditions for the empowerment of women. The index is operationalised using the 2015 DHS of Colombia.

JEL Classification: I31, I32, Z13

Keywords: Women's empowerment, Colombia, Multidimensional Empowerment Index